Founder & Director

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Caroline founded and directed Hua Dan, one of China’s first and leading social enterprises which was active during 2006 to 2021.

Hua Dan uses the power of participation in drama-based workshops to reveal and develop individual and community potential. Hua Dan has a particular focus on working with China’s rural-to-urban migrant workers, particularly women, who work in the manufacturing and service industries, at the heart of China’s economic boom.

In founding Hua Dan, Caroline pioneered the importance of participation in the arts and creative education in a country that has no precedent for anything other than a hierarchical, rote-learning education model; empowered female migrants from the countryside to lead and manage the organisation through a vocational training model; and refined a sustainable hybrid non-profit/for-profit business model for arts-based learning methodologies.

Caroline has a BA in Theatre Studies from Lancaster University and is an alumni of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government programme, ‘Global Leadership and Public Policy in the 21st Century’.

In 2007 she became an alumnus of INSEAD’s Social Entrepreneurship Executive education programme and was also elected a Waldzell ‘Architect of the Future’.

In 2010 she became a FYSE Fellow (Foundation for Youth Social Entrepreneurship).

In 2011 she became a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum.

Caroline was formerly Chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Arts in Society. She is an advisory board member of Compassion for Migrant Children and is also a Social Entrepreneur in Residence for INSEAD.

Caroline has lived and worked in China, Hong Kong, Mongolia, Spain, the UK, the US, India, Argentina and France. She speaks English, Mandarin, French and Spanish and now resides in Paris.

Caroline also formed two complementary organisations: Scheherazade Consulting, which provides theatre-based training services on global leadership issues, with a particular focus on China, India and the emerging world, to companies and institutions around the world; and Scheherazade Initiatives, which replicates the Hua Dan model in other emerging markets.

Caroline is also founder of The Centre for the Arts and Global Leadership, a unique arts and cultural centre and corporate leadership training and impact space in south west France, 20 minutes from Pau and with the most stunning views of the Pyrenees.

In partnership with colleagues from the Global Agenda Council on the Arts in Society, Caroline has also founded the Global Arts Impact Agenda that enables business and government to unleash the power of the arts for human development. GAIA is especially focused on the achievement of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals through the arts.

Caroline is a frequent speaker, consultant, and guest practitioner. Her areas of professional interest are global leadership, facilitating personal and social change, innovation, theatre and the arts, corporate social responsibility, women’s issues, spirituality, the emerging world and China.

General Manager

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Dong Fen was the first Hua Dan participant. She now has thirteen years of experience in Theatre in Education and Improvisational Theatre. She has directed performances of different topics and forms; in 2014 and 2016 she participated in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and brought two works about Chinese women to the festival: Hand Made in China and Chinese Women’s Whispers. Both of the performances received great welcome and reviews of four and five stars. She has led more then 10,000 workshops, mainly with a focus on children’s empowerment. In her workshops, children’s potential can be activated in its natural way

Currently, she is General Manager of Hua Dan, council member of Beijing Improv Group (BIG), and a councillor of the New Citizen Club.

Executive Assistant

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Cara has a background in all aspects of business management, administration and finance, having undertaken various Commercial Director roles for several international consulting companies. She has specific experience of setting up new business entities and offices throughout the Middle East and the USA. Cara also has experience of facilitating the delivery of professional training programmes for many companies throughout the world, together with experience of academia. She spent 3 years at the University of East Anglia, UK, as the Administrator for The Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment. This involved setting up systems for the newly created Centre, within a university environment, assisting the researchers and meeting all of the various funding and annual reporting requirements.

20 years ago, Cara moved to France and set up a company, one element of which was offering business administration support to companies throughout Europe. Alongside this, and together with her husband, she bought an old farmhouse with many outbuildings and 20 acres of land, which they have enjoyed renovating and re-wilding together.

Cara is the Executive Assistant to our Founder and Director, Caroline Watson, and she provides a multitude of support to our growing team and to the participants of our workshops.

Instructional Design

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Kirsten has a background in leadership acquired from several years working in University management. Passionate about business development and creating global partnerships, she has spent significant time in Asia, liaising with multinational companies and creating talent pipelines for future graduates, as well as cultivating mutually beneficial opportunities between the university and organisations to create new symbiotic relationships. Her biggest joy however, was working with thousands of students to help them realise their unique talents and skillsets, using coaching and workshops.

Three years ago, she took the leap and followed her lifelong dream of living in France, and pivoted her career to create her own business as an Instructional Designer, transforming the face to face learning experience in to e-learning experiences.

Kirsten supports our team using her skills in leadership and instructional design, and hopefully anything where she feels she can provide value.

Community Development

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SONA MAHTANI

Sona brings her experiences of leading a global majority led community business for 11 years, where she once volunteered for 18 months as a young graduate. She has supported over 420 organisations in a 25-year career and developed community networks after many years in key roles with socially enterprising organisations working with a focus on HIV and AIDS, training and employment, homelessness and community development. Sona places great emphasis on how people can use community development in tandem with community assets to enable lasting social change. After emigrating to France 4 years ago, she undertakes short and long term consultancy projects with grassroots organisations in Europe and the United Kingdom, alongside developing an organic hobby farm and creative retreat based on permaculture principles with her partner.

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Ms. Li Ding is the Vice President of NPI – one of the leading NGO supporting organizations in China since May, 2008. She is in charge of NPI PR & Communication Dept, and R&D center, responsible for New Program development including Social Entrepreneurs Institute, Venture Philanthropy Fund and Social Innovation Park etc,. Ms. Ding has more than 11 years of working experiences in multi-national companies and over 8 years in China’s emerging Third Sector. From 2009 to 2012, she is one of Chinese trainers for Social Entrepreneurship skills training program organized by British Council.

From Apr 2005 to Apr 2008, she was working for Conservation International China Program as Business Partnerships Program Officer in charge of engaging top enterprises towards eco-friendly business operation and direct investment on conservation programs. Before that, Ms. Ding Li was working for Unilever China as Marketing Controller for 2 years; she also served as Senior Product Manager and Brand Manager for L’Oreal China and Danone Group.

Ms. Ding is the member of Committee of the Pudong New District People’s Political Consultative Conference of Shanghai. She also serves as a member of the Global agenda council on Social Innovation established by World Economic Forum.

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Maoi Arroyo is a serial entrepreneur, impact investor, educator, and biologist. In 2018, she became the founder and principal of the Ignite Impact Fund, the first fund focused exclusively on eradicating income and access poverty in the Philippines. Her entrepreneurship career began when she founded Hybridigm Consulting, the premier and pioneering innovation consulting and commercialization firm in the Philippines. In the last 14 years, the firm has developed policy for the Philippine government, facilitated over $3.5M in biotech investments, trained over 17,000 aspiring entrepreneurs, and created 3,500 jobs. In addition, she has also co-founded a social enterprise that now supplies pasteurized eggs to 5 major hotels in the Philippines, a fashion brand that upcycles leather jackets into bags, a media company that promotes independent Filipino films, and a property development firm. In 2021, she was tapped to be a member of the Global Future Council on investing to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Over the last decade, Ms Arroyo has received several honors. She was hailed by Entrepreneur Magazine as one of the top 35 entrepreneurs under 35 in 2006, was the youngest PhilDev Foundation USA honoree for her contributions to national development through science and technology (2010). Ms Arroyo is also a 2011 Ten Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) awardee – and the only woman in that year. The TOYM is the most prestigious award given to Filipinos under 40 and is presented by the President of the Republic of the Philippines. In 2013 she was one of the DevEx 40 under 40 International Development Leaders, and selected one of the UK Foreign Commonwealth Office's International Leaders in 2014. She was named as one of the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders of 2015.

Ms. Arroyo is also an adjunct professor at the Asian Institute of Management, where she teaches Innovation and Entrepreneurship. She obtained an MPhil in Bioscience Enterprise from the University of Cambridge, and her first degree in Biology (BS) from the University of the Philippines.

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Natika Washington, MBA is a leading ESG practitioner and an international development expert, having devoted a career to ensure equal access to human rights opportunities around the world, especially for women and girls. Natika is the creator of TOBY Strategies (Tomorrow Owned By You), a boutique consulting firm offering a diverse range of business services to corporations, nonprofits and small business leaders of all sizes.

As former Vice President of Corporate Partnerships at Prison Fellowship, Natika led efforts to engage entities in investing in solutions to crime and incarceration. Prior to that, she served as the chief development officer at Polaris, a leader in the fight to eradicate human-trafficking. Natika spent more than 20 years working in the U.S. Government at the State Department where she worked in Secretary Clinton’s office. She was their director of global programs where she developed, implemented and tracked programs focused on diversity, equity and inclusivity. She was charged with implementing and monitoring gender integration in the U.S. State Department for eight years, both domestically and abroad. She managed the creation and execution of several multi-million-dollar initiatives in more than 90 developing countries. During this time, Natika liaised with foreign governments, foundations, and private-sector partners, including Delta Airlines, the Gates Foundation, the Goldman Sachs Foundation, and the Danish government, to build joint women’s empowerment partnerships.

Natika is a decorated war veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. She holds a master’s degree in business administration with a minor in cybersecurity from George Washington University and a bachelor of science in business communications. She recently completed the Johns Hopkins CSR certificate.

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Dr Orzala Nemat is an internationally known Afghan scholar and think tank leader. She is an expert in political ethnography, holding a PhD in Development Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and an MSc in Development Planning from the University College London (UCL). Dr Nemat recently founded and is leading the Development Research Group Limited (DRG), which aims to promote the multi-disciplinary concept of development studies in the developing world through research and evaluations, open-access teaching, and mentorship.

Dr Nemat served as the director of the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU) from 2016-2022. AREU is an internationally recognised top research think tank in Afghanistan. She led several global research projects in Afghanistan during her tenure, including a sizeable five-year project, "Drugs and (dis)Order: transforming war economies into peace economies' funded by Global Challenge Research Funds (GCRF) and UKRI. She has been a member of the UKRI Peer-review college since 2017.

Dr Nemat has first-hand experience in living as a war refugee and leading under intense conflict situations for over decades. She started her public career in Pakistan as a refugee and grassroots leader, founding a humanitarian organisation that provided health and educational support to women and children between 1999-2007. Dr Nemat assisted and helped the most marginalised members of society through educational programs, building schools, protecting female victims of violence through shelters and peacebuilding for children and leading advocacy for legal reform. She also supported various grassroots, national and international organisations for over 23 years of her professional life in different capacities. Dr Nemat was acting chairperson of the Open Society Foundation's Afghanistan until July 2021 and serves on Afghanaid, a British Charity working in Afghanistan as a trustee.

You can find out more about Dr Nemet’s work here.